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Thursday, July 28, 2011

At a protest against the Horse Carriage Industry. Protesters were talking with customers who had just taken a carriage ride. The carriage driver then whipped the horse and said to us that if we kept talking to them, he would keep whipping the horse. Unfortunately we didn't get that part on video, but we did get the man himself on camera along with his horse and carriage number. Activists renewed their call for a ban against horse-drawn carriages in the congested, dangerous traffic of Manhattan, but so far activists have only encountered silent resistance by City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, which is typically how she does things.

Monday, July 25, 2011

Queens' Peninsula Hospital Center set to close ; New York Downtown Hospital putting patients on stretchers in the hallway to accommodate unmanageable influx of emergency patients.

"Sources say the Far Rockaway, Queens, hospital will shutter after owing millions to vendors and falling behind on its union benefits funds payments; the closure would cost the area about 1,000 jobs," reported Crain's.

Meanwhile, following the illegal closing of St. Vincent's Hospital last year, there reamins only one hospital south of 16th Street in Manhattan, New York Downtown Hospital, which The New York Post has reported as being ''overwhelmed,'' and is leading to an ''emergency-care crisis,'' the newspaper reports.

"We have a system where some districts get a lot more than others and politics is the only reason," Stringer told reporters yesterday.

Quinn is an early frontrunner in the mayoral election with the largest war chest of more than $4 million. Yet one of her major challenges in her expected run is the so-called slush fund scandal that erupted in 2007.

-- Excerpted from the Daily Politics blog by Celeste Katz on The New York Daily News.

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Is Christine Quinn going to allow NYU to demolish more and more historical landmarks in Greenwich Village ?

Real estate billionaires are counting on City Council Speaker Christine Quinn to ram through NYU's radical expansion plans that will tear down many brownstone homes, so that NYU can construct more zone-busting glass and steel mega-dorms, which won't pay any property taxes to the city, so reports crainsnewyorkbusiness.com, not much unlike how she is ramming the luxury condo conversion of St. Vincent's Hospital through the city's land use process. Whilst Jane Jacobs is turning in her grave, Alicia Hurley is rubbing her palms in eager anticipation.

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn's director of community outreach dropped a few F-bombs at a local fundraiser last week.

Christine Quinn needs to rein in her director of community outreach Tony Simone.

The City Council speaker's office has issued an apology after Simone reached out to protesters outside a Quinn fund-raiser last Monday by lobbing a few F-bombs their way.

Documentary maker Donny Moss tells us that the protest outside the Dream Downtown hotel, which drew close to 30 people, was one of several that he and others will organize "between now and the mayoral election," to urge voters to "look beyond" Quinn's "identity" as a gay politician "to her actual record."

Moss addresses the issue in a 10-minute YouTube film called "Christine Quinn: Behind The Smile," in which he outlines a number of instances where, he contends, Quinn has "betrayed the gay community behind the scenes since becoming speaker."

Perhaps that's why Simone didn't have anything good to say when he encountered the protest at the Dream Downtown on Monday night where Quinn was having an $11-a-head fund-raiser for her 2013 mayoral campaign. (Quinn avoided her critics by using a back entrance to the hotel.)

According to Moss and another witness, Simone — who's a former Goldman Sachs portfolio analyst— approached the demonstrators, who were stationed on 16th St. between Eighth and Ninth Aves. outside of the hotel's entrance.

There, Simone asked one protester if Moss was present. Told that the filmmaker was indeed among the group, Simone responded: "Tell him to go f--- himself."

Moss says Simone then spotted longtime gay rights activist Allen Roskoff, and shouted "F--- you" at him before heading inside to the fund-raiser.

Roskoff, who's also been critical of Quinn, is president of the Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club and co-author of the nation's first gay rights bill.

When we ran this story by Quinn's office, her communications director Jamie McShane told us Simone had gone to the fund-raiser "on his own time," where he was "repeatedly verbally abused by protesters. Tony lost his cool and should not have. He apologizes for his actions."

"That's a patent lie," replied Moss, who insisted "no one even recognized" Simone until he hurled his epithets.

"I didn't even say a word to him after he said I should go f--- myself," said Moss. He added that he and Roskoff were "mesmerized" by the city employee's behavior and said nothing.

Moss said he also didn't react when, he claimed, Simone approached him at another protest in summer 2009 and "shouted in my face, 'Loser!'

"I'm more interested in exposing Quinn's record than engaging with people who are invested in her success," he said.

Union representatives from Local 375 and DC 37, community activists, New York City taxpayers, and others gathered at 1250 Broadway in a demonstration against the technology company known as SAIC.

For years, newspaper and television reporters, bloggers, and whistle blowers have been reporting details of a massive taxpayer fraud perpetrated by New York City officials, by employees of SAIC and of another company known as Technodyne, and possibly by lobbyists in connection with the scandalous CityTime project.

The CityTime project began with an original budget of approximately $60 million, but has since ballooned to over $700 million.

The U.S. Attorney's Office has begun an investigation, but nobody yet knows how high this scandal, and other technology consultancy contract scandals, may go up the Bloomberg administration.

The misfortune of some is the good luck of others. The humiliating fall in the polls by the darling candidate for mayor of New York, Queens-elected Democrat Anthony Weiner, in an incredible case of "sexting" on Twitter, has re-energized the race for mayor. The current "speaker" of the city, a sort of president of the city council, Christine Quinn is now a favorite figure. If elected in 2013, she would be the first woman to hold this position. The first lesbian, too.

Electrically-charged, the Democrat, 44, descendant of an Irish survivor of the sinking of the Titanic, entered politics at age 24. She participated as an assistant to the election of Tom Duane, the first openly gay city councilman of New York. She then served as director of the New York Anti-Violence Project, an organization that fights violence against LGBT people.

Long in the closet
In 1999 she entered the New York City Council, voted in by the bastions of gay Chelsea and Greenwich Village. During the campaign, these opponents, including two gay, accused her of being heterosexual to discredit her ! In vain. She became "speaker" in 2006, the second-highest political figure of the city behind the mayor.

Educated in Catholic schools outside of New York, she had long been in the closet. Today, LGBT rights are part of her proverbial war arsenal. Her struggle of the moment : the legalization of gay marriage in the State of New York. Before legislators in Albany, the state capital, she regularly refers to his union with the business lawyer Kim Catullo to point to the injustice of the current situation.

Board by the police
Equally at home in political assemblies in the street, Quinn is sure to be at all pro-gay events of great magnitude. She has even been arrested by the police in conjunction with the St. Patrick's Day parade in New York, for trying to infiltrate these processions in which gays and lesbians have illegally told they have no place.

Monday, July 11, 2011

Christine Quinn's ''Dream'' Fundraiser Turns into ''Nightmare'' as Her Personal Assistant Screams the F-Bomb to St. Vincent's Protesters.

LGBTQ activists, Health care activists, government transparency activists, public official integrity activists, and animal rights activists held a flashmob protest outside City Council Speaker Christine Quinn's fundraiser at Dream nightclub tonight in Chelsea.

Many LGBTQ activists and allies joined the emergency protest organised outside Speaker Quinn's fundraiser. Many LGBTQ activists said they believe that Speaker Quinn should have started fighting for marriage equality in 2005, back when Mayor Michael Bloomberg ordered the appeal of a landmark gay marriage ruling. In all her time in public office, Speaker Quinn has subjugated herself to the misogynist domination of Mayor Bloomberg.

Tony Simone, photographed right, a NYC official who is paid $113,000.00 in taxpayer money each year (plus opaque discretionary member item bonuses) and who reports directly to Speaker Quinn, left, told the St. Vincent's protesters, “F*ck you!” outside Speaker Quinn’s fundraising event at the ”Dream” nightclub in Chelsea.

It was noted in this space last week how well Brooklyn Democratic boss Vito Lopez fares in City Council Speaker Christine Quinn’s annual tax-dollar giveaway.

There have been developments.

Lopez, a state assemblyman and the subject of a federal corruption investigation, needed a front-end loader to haul away the so-called member-item cash lavished on him in the new city budget by Quinn — who used four pliant council members as cutouts.

But it turns out that Quinn took a fire ax to Queens Councilman Peter Vallone’s share of the boodle.

Vallone is a truly singular council member, in the sense that he has thus far managed to avoid attracting the attention of federal prosecutors, and it seems unlikely that he ever will.

But he irked Quinn by vocally opposing the renaming of the Queensboro Bridge in honor of former Mayor Ed Koch — so the speaker slashed his member-item take by 42%, or roughly $600,000.

Let’s be clear: Nobody should be getting member-item money.

These are lump-sum appropriations that corrupt the political process by giving incumbents cash to curry unfair favor with constituents; simultaneously, these cash goodies give bullying council bosses undue leverage over their underlings.

And Vallone — who apparently irritated Quinn and had his cash yanked as an example — proves the point.

Yet Quinn is cool with Lopez, who attracts the FBI like overripe pork attracts flies. Quinn channeled $4.4 million this year to his Brooklyn power base — the Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Citizens Council — through Brooklyn council members Domenic Recchia, Erik Dilan, Stephen Levin and Elizabeth Crowley.

While some $3.75 million is earmarked for alleged “capital construction,” the rest neatly covers salary and benefits for:

(Quinn also managed to find $2 million for the United Federation of Teachers’ academically shaky charter school — but that’s a tale for another day.)

One final note: Quinn is many things — brash, personable, ambitious, maybe New York City’s next mayor.

But we’ve never thought her to be petty.

Until now.

Because she wasn’t content with punishing just Vallone for his temerity. She also took it out on the councilman’s father — former Council Speaker Peter Vallone Sr., arguably the last person to perform the office’s duties with decorum and dignity.

Cut from the budget was $6 million for a City University public-policy program named in his honor.

That’s the Vallones’ loss, to be sure.

But mostly it’s the city’s.

Christine Quinn should be ashamed.

Meanwhile, check out what other blogs are saying about this latest disgraceful turn about Speaker Quinn's slush fund scandal :

Op-Ed Bonus ! What a disgrace. How does Christine Quinn find hundreds of thousands of dollars for an indicted political slime ball, and millions in aggregate monies for member items, but she could not find $1 to save St. Vincent's Hospital in her very own city council district? This is sick and twisted. When are the over-taxed, over-fined, over-ticketed, over-tolled, over-run people of New York City going to wake up and vote Christine Quinn out of office? I realise that LGBTQ people want to rally around a leader, but damn, can't we pick one with a little bit of integrity? How about just a minimal standard of integrity? Is there a lowest common denominator of integrity we can demand out of LGBTQ leaders? How about a lowest expectations of integrity? If we scraped the bottom of Christine Quinn's diluted soup pan of weakened integrity broth, would we find any integrity sediment at all?

Thursday, July 7, 2011

Bankruptcy Judge Cecelia Morris has let the management of St. Vincent's avoid Freedom of Information requests and has let the Rudin Family to gut St. Vincent's and is about to let the Family take a wrecking ball to it. Now, Judge Morris is going to let the Management and the Family destroy evidence.

Management of St. Vincent's Asks Bankruptcy Court to Approve Document Destruction, So That No Investigation Can Ever Determine Why the Hospital Closed Abruptly And Without Any Legally-Mandated Closure Plan.

No politician -- not CB2 Chair Brad Hoylman, not City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, or Senator Tom Duane -- is willing to do anything to prevent the luxury condo conversion of St. Vincent's. With the shredding trucks about to pull into the ambulance bays of St. Vincent's, the obstruction of justice will be complete : there may be no more hope to ever investigate the shady decisions that lead the hospital to close on April 30, 2010. It's exactly as Sarah Jessica Parker said : ''The community needs a hospital — and I think there’s been some clever obfuscation.''

During the 3 terms of the Bloomberg administration, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn kept approving each year's city budget, which included all the approvals and sign-offs on the CityTime cost over-runs.

During the Bloomberg-Quinn administration, lobbyists for the primary CityTime contractors, Scientific Applications International Corporation and Technodyne, kept teams of expensive lobbyists on their payroll to do exactly what ? Were lobbyists being paid to prevent any government agency to investigate the 2003 Richard Valcich letter ?

In 2003, Mr. Valcich was the Executive Director of the Office of Payroll Administration. In his 6 page letter to SAIC, Mr. Valcich questioned the motivations behind SAIC's poor performance on the CityTime contract ; SAIC kept dragging out deadlines and delivering product that Mr. Valcich described as "below acceptable standards."

As of the time of the writing of Mr. Valcich's letter, New York City had spent $35 million thus far on the doomed CityTime project. Current cost estimates put the price tag at over $700 million, of which $600 million has been described as "fraud."

During all this time, though, the principal outsourced companies working on CityTime were dispatching teams of lobbyists, to keep the cost over-runs being paid, and maybe for other motives.... The newsroom of WNYC, the public radio station, cannot pinpoint the exact role of the shady CityTime lobbyists.

"What prosecutors have yet to publicly discuss is the role played by former city officials from both the Giuliani and Bloomberg administrations that acted as lobbyists on behalf of SAIC and subcontractors such as New Jersey-based Technodyne. ...

"The city's lobbying database shows a small army of former prominent city officials who did work for SAIC and Technodyne. Defense contractor SAIC has retained former City Comptroller Liz Holtzman, Peter Powers, who served as Mayor Giuliani's top deputy Mayor for operations, and Seth Kaye, who worked in both the Giuliani and Bloomberg administrations. Technodyne's lobbyists include former Bloomberg Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications Commissioner Gino Menchini and Agostino Cangemi, who also held key posts in both administrations.

"National Strategies, the lobbying firm that employs Menchini and Cangemi, says the firm had no role in CityTime and discontinued working "on general business procurement" for Technodyne as soon as the criminal allegations surfaced. (Another Technodyne lobbyist of record, Sal Salamone, was director of the Mayor’s Office of Computer Planning and has worked for SAIC.)"

No journalism outlet has yet to report the extent of lobbying by other CityTime subcontractors, such as Spherion and Gartner. If the lobbyists were trying to thwart any investigation into the $600 million CityTime fraud, would those lobbying activities rise to the level of obstruction of justice ?

Monday, July 4, 2011

Eileen Dunn, R.N., tells residents of the Lower West Side of Manhattan that Mayor Michael Bloomberg put the ''knife to the chest'' of St. Vincent's Hospital, and that the mayor is responsible for blocking the restoration of a hospital to the Lower West Side.

Under the cover of darkness, over a holiday weekend, and in usual opaque fashion, Community Board 2 announced with very short notice a meeting for tomorrow that will keep pushing a first aid clinic to replace St. Vincent's Hospital.

"The fraud-riddled CityTime payroll system is being transferred to the city's control in the wake of indictments, guilty pleas and the public demand by Mayor Bloomberg that he wants $600 million back from the company in charge of the project.

"Rather than rely on contractors caught up in the corruption scandal to oversee the system, the city will assemble a team of roughly 70 technicians under its own control -- including many who worked for the companies now under investigation," reported The New York Post.

"Buried in the agency's resolution was the surprising announcement that, come January, the city will seek new proposals for computerized payroll management," The Post report added.

During these three terms of Bloomberg mayoral control, he and Deputy Mayor Christine Quinn have complete and total control over the city budget, including approving appropriations of most, if not all, of the cost over-runs on the CityTime project. Will Mr. de Blasio do the right thing -- and launch an independent ethics investigation ? For more coverage, please visit the CityTime cover-up reporting by True News From Change.